Note on Post Office Accounts
AD (copy): Historical Society of Pennsylvania
April 2, 1768, to January 3, 1770
[The credit entries, running from April 2, 1768 to March 17,
1769, are of money received by Franklin and Foxcroft from American
post offices. In round figures the receipts from James Parker in New
York were £2,439, from Philadelphia £312, and from smaller places
(Talbot Court House, presumably Talbot, Md.; Rhode Island, presumably
Newport; and Annapolis) £73, a total of £2,824 sterling. The
disproportion between Parker’s figures and the rest was doubtless due
to his collecting, as comptroller, from numerous post offices outside
New York. Boston and towns to the north of it, and those south of
Maryland, appear to have remitted independently. A sampling of the
receipts that are given in provincial currency as well as in sterling
indicates that the exchange rate was most favorable in Pennsylvania
and least so in New York: in the former it ranged between £169 and
£167.5 to £100 sterling, and in the latter between £180 and £177.7.
The debit entries, running from April 2, 1768, to Jan. 3, 1770, are
of payments from the Post Office to Franklin and Foxcroft: two years’
salary for each at £300 a year, Foxcroft’s traveling expenses in
America in 1769 at a guinea a day and his outlays for “Jonas Greens
Suit,” etc. The total of £1,861 left a balance due to the Post Office
of £963.]
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